Create.

(stolen from my today's 750words.com entry)

All I want to do is make. Make things. Create. Construct. I cannot stop myself from exploring new ideas & new things to make. I could make these things as gifts. I could make them to sell. But I have to make. Make make make. I'm pretty sure it drives my husband absolutely crazy as I have more supplies than I really know what to do with. Sometimes I think I should really get down to brass tacks & decide what I REALLY want to specialize in. Is it knitting/crocheting? Is it sewing? Is it paper crafts? Is it jewelry? What is it? Because I love to do all of these things. So I keep exploring. I keep making. I keep ending up with great ideas that sometimes don't turn out all that great. In fact, sometimes I end up with all the supplies for a certain project & then I end up just chucking it all after years & years because I've lost interest, come to my senses, had a baby & have no time, etc.

When I lived in LA I got into making soaps & candles. I'm sure my family was OVERJOYED to get yet another homemade body scrub, bubble bath, bath salts or candle from me. I spent lots of time & money concocting glycerin soaps with essential oils & rose petals. I invested in different molds & old pans to melt things in. I did the same with candles. Candles are fun. I stained a few rented apartment countertops with the various dyes (usually crayons). But it did not sustain. I never had the room. I never got 'good enough' to keep going with such projects. So I moved on. Of course that was after I moved a huge box of supplies (including a large flat piece of (very heavy) 'clear' wax for candle making).

After returning to Duluth I got more into scrapbooking & cardmaking. Of course my sister is the star scrapbooker in our family & I can't even hope to keep up with her. I don't have the preciseness or the attention span. I'm not a perfectionist & I hate that. i have tried to change things, but I can't seem to follow through. So I do a little here & there. I love scrapbooks & everything that goes along with it - paper - especially paper. I sort of have paper addiction. I couldn't ever have "too much" paper (again, my husband likely disagrees with me on this point). And cards. I love making cards. I love using stamps, embellishments, for a while I was into quilling (rolled paper). I love mail - getting & sending - so this is a perfect hobby for me. I love things that are handmade. That people had to put (even 15 minutes!) time into making. And quite frankly the 'hand made' cards they sell at Target are so expensive - and really not that difficult to copy. I hope people appreciate the hand made cards. I love making them. I just wish I had more time to make a bunch so I wasn't always in a pinch to make a nice card.

For a while I thought I would make scrabble tile pendant necklaces, but I had trouble with the epoxy sitting just right (apparently I have no attention span & get bored or frustrated & give up too quickly). Now I'm making bottle cap necklaces which I adore. I'm not sure if they'll sell or not, but my GOAL is to actually get some items up on Etsy & make a go of it. Anything would help at this point.

I love to knit. I am almost done with August's baby blanket. It's big & cozy & I hope he loves it. At least some day. It took Dahlia a while to come around to hers (it's not as soft as I would like it to be) but she does use it at daycare which makes me happy. I am done with my felted bag but I'd like to line it. Of course there were no instructions on that so I have to sort of just figure it out. Hmmmm. I finished Steve's scarf - he's ready for winter! I have a few baby wash cloths in inventory - so I'm almost ready to start a new knitting project - yay! I have some beautiful yarn from Three Irish Girls that I would like to put to good use. Maybe I should return to trying to make socks? I'm not sure if I could get into it again or not but I still think it'd be fun.

I'm also a HUGE hoarder of magazines. I love them. I love going through them & tearing out images that appeal to me in an instant. I love the textures, the lighting, the fashion, the artistry, the nature, the simplicity, the vintage-ness. I have oodles of National Geographics that I inherited years ago from my mother-in-law which I just cannot part with. I have used them for everything from making my own envelopes, making up-cycled personalized journals, these bottle cap necklaces & of course cards. I simply cannot get rid of them! They are gold to me, I know it - somewhere. And the Martha Stewart Living magazines are just filled with so many beautiful & inspiring images. I am pretty good about going through them & tearing out my inspiring pages shortly after receiving the mags, but oh...I could drool over them for hours. When Sarah moved to Scotland, I took her bag of mags - Glamour & such. I usually don't buy these but they have been so much fun to tear apart & use for various adventures in crafting. I'm also making a "magazine bowl" which I think will be really cool if I can ever finish the darn thing.

So you see I'm a girl who likes to dabble in many things. I cannot get enough of trying new things (I didn't even touch on sewing yet! Oh the things I want to sew! quilts & dresses for Dahlia & bags & table runners and and and....). I love searching the internet & being inspired. Pinterest has made me so full of motivation & creativity that sometimes it's almost overwhelming. I don't know though if I should try to focus my creativity into ONE area & actually perfect something or if I should continue to spread my interests far & wide & keep doing a little bit of everything (albeit not very well).

This is my quandry. My constant quandry. A friend of mine once said, "why would you give up doing all the things that you love? It is what makes you, you." I have carried that with me for years. Why would I? Do I need to? I don't know.